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Nobody's Perfect
So Amy Sohn has another piece in this week's New York magazine (I know, why do I do this to myself?) that has me wondering if it's just the people she bumps into or if everyone is so unexamined.
The column is about how wildly controversial it is not to want children. How's that for another manufactured syndrome? Really, why stop there? There are tons of other neglected, but surely offended, sub-groups that need their outsider status confirmed.
People who only want one child, and won't have another
People who only want a boy
People who only want girls
People who are angry because they can't decide whether or not to have kids
People who want kids but don't want to make their parents happy
People who want multiple cats and multiple children
People who want kids and dogs but no spouse.
People who want children, but not if they have to live with global warming
People who don't want children or pets
Dating is hard no matter what side of the parent question you're on, and it just seems facile to decide that being a no-kids person somehow makes one rare and edgy. Growing up, I remember many of my parents' friends, single and married, choosing not to have kids. My own acquaintance is littered with people in their late 20s to mid 50s who have either decided or eased gradually into not having kids and while most of them are in committed relationships, none of them feels particularly radical.
This is not to say that the decision to be kid-less is always easy and negotiating a child-free life isn't tricky at times, but enough with the hand-wringing. Consider the convenience of this deal breaker: if kids are really out of the question, that is one easy way to filter out undesirable dates.
The interesting part of this article is not so much that people are making these decisions about their lives, but the sense that they have to feel victimized. Why is it more comforting to think that the world is conspiring against you than that you just haven't found a good partner?
In the end, one will always have to come to terms with something about one's wife or husband, boyfriend or girlfriend. There's a reason why the last scene of Some Like It Hot is so funny and zings so hard, after all.
posted by Elise at 8:33 AM
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Wow, I have two Aunts who have husbands/partners (are over 40) but have never had kids - and two Uncles who are still single (and over 45) and have never been married nor had children. So because it's not an unusual thing in my family's experience, I see it as a perfectly normal choice (though I myself would love to one day raise kids) not to become a parent.
I find it odd how others can, in our day and age, actually see it as scandalous or unnatural, or some sort of flaw in a person's nature, to not want a 'family' ie: children. Each to their own, I say :D
10/31/2005 9:33 PM
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1/21/2007 4:44 PM
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